The following takes place between 11pm and 2amon the day of Wolfgang Staehle's visit to the American Embassy

For some reason I remember standing in a phone booth at a 76 Station in PalmDesert at nine-thirty on a Sunday night, late last August, waiting for a phonecall from Blair, who was leaving for New York the next morning for three weeksto join her father on location. I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and an oldbaggy argyle sweater and tennis shoes with no socks and my hair was unbrushedand I was smoking a cigarette. And from where I was standing, I could see a busstop with four or five people sitting or standing under the fluorescentstreetlights, waiting. There was a teenage boy, maybe fifteen, sixteen, who Ithought was hitchhiking and I was feeling on edge and I wanted to tell the boysomething, but the bus came and the boy got on. I was waiting in a phone boothwith no door and the Day-Glo light was insistent and giving me a headache. Aparade of ants marched across an empty yogurt cup that I put my cigarette outinto. It was strange that night. There were three phone booths at thisparticular gas station on that Sunday night last August and each booth was beingused. There was a young surfer in the booth next to mine in OP shorts and ayellow T-shirt with "MAUI" etched across it and I was pretty sure that he waswaiting for the bus. I didn't think the surfer was talking to anyone; that hewas pretending to be talking and that there was no one listening on the otherend and all I could keep thinking about was is it better to pretend to talk thannot talk at all and I kept remembering this night at Disneyland with Blair. Thesurfer kept looking over at me and I kept turning away, waiting for the phone toring. A car pulled up with a license plate that read "GABSTOY" and a girl with ablack Joan Jett haircut, probably Gabs, and her boyfriend, who was wearing ablack Clash T-shirt, got out of the car, motor still running, and I could hearthe strains of an old Squeeze song. I finished another cigarette and lit onemore. Some of the ants were drowning in the yogurt. The bus came by. People goton. Nobody got off. And I kept thinking about that night at Disneyland andthinking about New Hampshire and about Blair and me breaking up.

Bar: The Thing New YorkMusic: American Embassy Berlin

A warm wind whipped through the empty gas station and the surfer, who I thoughtwas a hustler, hung up the phone and I heard no dime drop and pretended not tonotice. He got on a bus that passed by. GABSTOY left. The phone rang. It wasBlair. And I told her not to go. She asked me where I was. I told her that I wasin a phone booth in Palm Desert. She asked "Why?" I asked "Why not?" I told hernot to go to New York. She said that it was a little too late to be bringingthis up. I told her to come to Palm Springs with me. She told me that I hurther; that I promised I was going to stay in L.A.; that I promised I would nevergo back East. I told her that I was sorry and that things will be all right andshe said that she had heard that already from me and that if we really like eachother, what difference will four months make. I asked her if she remembered thatnight at Disneyland and she asked, "What night at Disneyland?" and we hung up.And so I drove back to L.A. and went to a movie and sat by myself and then drovearound until one or so and sat in a restaurant on Sunset and drank coffee andfinished my cigarettes and stayed until they closed. And I drove home and Blaircalled me. I told her that I'll miss her and that maybe when I get back, thingswill work out. She said maybe, and then that she did remember that night atDisneyland. I left for New Hampshire the next week and didn't talk to her forfour months.